


adagio

by wastrelwoods



Series: where the heart is [3]
Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Domesticity, Grinding, M/M, No One Here Is Getting Any Work Done Because They're Too Gay, mild/vague sexual content, minor identity crisis revolving around actually Having An Identity, my brand: saccharine fluff + a dash of hurt/comfort, peter nureyev + music, some space linguistics headcanons
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-28
Updated: 2017-07-28
Packaged: 2018-12-07 21:11:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,553
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11631996
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wastrelwoods/pseuds/wastrelwoods
Summary: There's the barest snatch of a song floating aimlessly around in Peter's head, and he couldn't remember a word of it if he tried.





	adagio

There's the barest snatch of a song floating aimlessly around in Peter's head, and he couldn't remember a word of it if he tried. Something distant, years back in his memory, tangled up in the debris of a thousand discarded faces and names and pastimes and quirks and flaws. The memories of people who never were. 

It's a quiet song, he seems to remember. Not a sound he once heard echoing over the tiered ceiling of a dance hall or an opera shuttle. Perhaps it was plucked out on a piano, or a sitar. Perhaps he even played it himself, although more than likely not. He can't recall the last time he spent long enough learning an instrument to entertain more than a passable farce at fluency.

The tune's barely in his head at all, and the emptiness of it itches. It's a terrible tease. The melody dipped, like so, he can remember that much. And then it lilted, slowed, repeated, danced over a sharp quarter-toned note and--

And then what?

"You're not about to start singing on me, are you?"

Peter lowers the tablet he'd been idly browsing through, and raises an eyebrow delicately at Juno, who raises one right back and prods Peter's thigh with his foot, hard. "Hmm?"

"You've been whistling under your breath for the last five minutes," Juno accuses, fixing him with a mock-stern glare. He's meant to be paging through a positively barbarian paper file of old cases, looking for a pattern connecting to a recent string of extortions, but he doesn't appear to have his mind much on the task. The file rests open on his chest, a haphazard sheaf of notes and photos and printouts of documents ready to scatter to the four winds if he shifts too hard from his reclined pose. He jabs Peter's thigh again, and rests his feet back in his lap. 

Peter places a hand on his knee, idly sliding up his thigh. "And you'd prefer I keep quiet and leave you to your very important reading, would you?"

His touch brushes high enough to make Juno gasp, soft and quick. "I'm just saying, it's distracting." 

Peter grins, and leaves his hand where it is a moment longer, turning his focus back to the holoscreen in front of him. "Distracting?" he echoes.

"Goddamnit, Peter, I'm trying to work, okay?" Juno makes a pretense of shifting to pick up his file of papers again, though if Peter recalls their orientation correctly he's holding it upside down. 

"Juno, dearest, I wouldn't dream of interfering with that work of yours," Peter promises, scraping his nails lightly over Juno's skin and flicking through the bank information of one of Saturn's least deserving trillionaires. That half-forgotten tune is still dancing through his head, in scattered notes and meaningless syllables and a lingering uncertain melancholy he can't quite place. He whistles another bar without really meaning to. 

Juno shifts again, attention caught. "What song is that, anyway? Feel like I've heard it somewhere before." 

It would be poor form now to ruin his perfect record and admit to Juno that there is something he doesn't know, so Peter evades. "Why, were you hoping to make a duet of it? Juno, I had no idea you sang." 

"What? No," Juno argues, sitting up and tossing his work aside. The file lands with a gentle thump and a flutter of scattered paper. "I don't sing." 

Peter grins wider, and shifts so that the deep vee of his dress falls open at the collar. "Not even if I asked…very nicely?"

Juno flushes, and glares, and crosses his arms over his chest. "I'll sing when im dead," he grunts.

A laugh spills past Peter's lips before he can check it, and he drops the tablet between the back cushions of the couch, leaning down to press his lips to Juno's. "I don't think it quite works that way, love."

It's unhurried and sweet, the gentle slide of Juno's mouth against his, the hands in his hair while Peter moves his fingers under the hem of Juno's shirt and up, and up. 

And he does sing, eventually, when Peter's shifted and guided Juno over him, straddling his thighs, burying his face in the crook of Peter's neck as they move against one another, slow and careful and rhythmic. Juno's lovely tenor rises and falls with the steady shift of his hips, gasping a new melody against Peter's skin until each of their voices in turn crescendo and die out. 

"That doesn't count," Juno grumbles, when Peter shares this thought with him, half-murmured between soft kisses and the way he reaches up to brush a loose curl of hair plastered to Juno's forehead with a light sheen of sweat. 

Peter just smiles, and hums contentedly. 

But he still can't remember what comes next, in that little fragment of a melody still dancing around his head. Another refrain, or a new theme entirely, and he can't be sure without the words there to help him along. And he's long forgotten those.

Or, at least, so he thinks. 

It comes back to him all at once, later that same evening, as he stands in the kitchen mixing a drink, of all things. His distracted humming turns to whistling, turns to absentminded singing, and it takes his brain a minute to catch up with his tongue, and falter as he recognizes the language. It's been years since he last spoke it aloud. 

Brahmese. 

Peter sets the tumbler down on the counter and furrows his brow, letting a few more of the syllables trip off his tongue. They should feel awkward, after twenty years of complete disuse. But more than anything, it only feels strange. Strange because it doesn't feel strange at all. On the contrary, it comes as natural as breathing. 

Being Peter Nureyev. After all this time, it shouldn't be so easy to slip back into the role. 

His voice breaks over the end of a phrase, and for a moment he's totally lost in the singular sensation of his past brushing up against his present. A thing he never thought he could have. 

He'd always intended to forget. To leave Brahma and its music and its…people behind, wipe all record of the place from his memory. He can't say whether he's disappointed to discover that he'd failed now. 

Trying to wrap his mouth around the Brahmese words again leaves him lightheaded, and he chokes on a quiet, shaky laugh, his fingers pressed over his own mouth like he can keep the sound from escaping. 

"Peter?" 

He turns, still bracing himself against the counter, to see Juno standing in the doorway, his face drawn in tentative concern. Peter thinks he can feel his hands trembling. 

"Something wrong?" 

The answer ought to be a resounding yes, because he shouldn't remember the tune so clearly. His tongue should tangle over the words. He shouldn't be able to stand here twenty years and half a galaxy removed from Peter Nureyev and still be the same man. It's only a name, after all, discarded as quickly and as easily as any of the thousand other names he's worn. 

But perhaps it's a little more than that. 

Juno must take his silence for an answer to the affirmative, because he's across the room in an instant, his hands on Peter's shoulders, saying his name again with an edge of fear that shakes him out of his thoughts abruptly. 

"I'm fine," he manages, and when Juno looks both incredulous and even more worried, takes a deep breath and amends. "Or I will be. Truly. Just a little lost in thought." He takes one of Juno's hands in his own and brushes his lips over the knuckles, softly. 

He nods, slow, solemn, and rests his palm against Peter's neck, the rough pad of his thumb brushing the corner of his jaw. "If you're sure," he says, willing to give Peter this much privacy, and Peter wants to laugh again, at the half-absurd notion of keeping Juno at arms length, Juno who's held all of Peter's deepest secrets since the first day they met, who's been privy to the very thoughts and memories in his head, who never leaves his mind for an instant even when they spend weeks at a time orbiting stars half a spiral arm apart. 

On the other hand, it's quite difficult to put into words a feeling that he can barely begin to understand himself. He reaches out to run his fingers through Juno's curls, strains of the old melody still echoing in his head. _I love you,_ he wants to say, in Martian and in Sol Common and in Trappist and in New Mandarin and in Brahmese and in any other language he can find the words for it. But Juno as a rule prefers actions to words, the sort he can pretend not to understand the significance of. 

Peter swallows. "I should let you get back to your work," he decides, and Juno rolls his eye. 

"It'll keep," he promises, reaching over Peter's shoulder for the bottle and pouring himself a glass. "Galaxy probably won't implode if we take the rest of the night off. What do you say?"

And really, how can Peter find fault with an argument so persuasive as that?

**Author's Note:**

> the thing is im like....as monolingual as most white american 'what the fuck is a language' kids so....writing a polyglot character's experiences w language? maybe a little stupid of me,,but i love him. and so also when i say the song that peter's remembering is a LOT like this farsi lullaby u gotta understand.....im trustin to the internet over my own experiences 
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frgKViID5FM


End file.
